


Coffee & Donuts

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Angst, Crack, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s not <i>competition</i>, Sam. That place sells overpriced coffee and tea, and calls it something fancy to justify the price. And they probably serve shitty, gluten-free, vegan-happy pastries that taste like sod, too. We sell doughnuts. That’s all there is to it.”</p><p>But that wasn’t all there was to it.</p><p>***</p><p>Wherein Dean and Sam Winchester inherit their father's donut shop, some tattooed hipster named Cas opens up a coffee joint across the street, and chaos ensues in the form of too many pastry-related puns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee & Donuts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aerialiste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/gifts).



> I spent way too much time figuring out that "donut" is an adjective or proper noun, and "doughnut" is a regular noun. They don't teach you that shit in school and they _should_. It's important.
> 
> Anyway, this was mostly an experiment in exposition. Also, I hope you enjoy inadvertently learning about generational economic climate change in the form of a fluffy coffeeshop!AU.
> 
> s/o to Jim's Donuts for being the inspiration for this fic.
> 
> UPDATE: Fanart linked at relevant points in the fic.

John Winchester owned a donut shop for a long goddamn time. It was aptly named _John’s Donuts_ and it was open twenty-four hours a day, 364 days a year, closed only on Christmas.

Dean and Sam grew up there, listening to the stories of John’s war veteran buddies at the bar, sitting on bolted-down twisty stools, Marlboro Reds between their fingers wafting smoke into the atmosphere, a couple of glazes in front of them, and a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee that had been refilled by John ten times already.

When John Winchester died, Dean and Sam inherited the donut shop. Without John’s unceasing daily rapport with the veteran patrons, sales plummeted. The shop only stayed afloat by the seven a.m. crowd picking up pastries for the office, and the three a.m. crowd of after-hours bar-hoppers with nowhere else to go.

The hipster coffeehouse across the street did little to help matters.

Seraphim opened up in the space that used to hold a butcher shop owned by a good family friend, Bobby Singer, but Bobby had to sell it because he was getting married to Ellen Harvelle, who owned the Roadhouse down the street. After John’s death, he realized that life was too short to spend cutting apart dead animals and pretending he had a drinking problem just so he could chat up Ellen, the woman on whom he had an unrequited crush for several decades.

Apparently, it wasn’t unrequited at all.

Some guy bought the property and spent a couple months renovating it. Dean watched the progress from the big window of the donut shop every morning as the sun rose, Styrofoam coffee cup in hand, covered in glaze and flour, seething with quiet rage.

In early fall, the shop finally opened its doors; no grand opening, no advertising. Their sign was a big chalkboard on the side of the building with fancy lettering, and the trim of the antique building had been painted a dark teal. Outside were a few mismatched rocking chairs with little tables between them. The hours were posted on another, smaller chalkboard by the front entrance in the same fancy writing as the bigger one, and it advertised the welcome of a "heavenly" pumpkin spice latte.

Dean hated it. He hated all of it, from the white Christmas tree lights neatly tucked around the trim of the building, to the big bucket of sidewalk chalk by the front door so that people could draw on the parking lot asphalt.

Fucking _hipsters._

When Sam huffed a laugh behind Dean and set a heavy hand on his shoulder, he asked, “So are you going to go over there or what?”

Dean took a gulp of his coffee—tasted like shit, always had, but it was _home_ so he kept up with the same vendor John had used since the day they opened—and replied, “Hell no.”

“Well one of us should.” Dean could almost _hear_ the noncommittal shrug behind him. “You know… to check out the competition.”

“It’s not _competition_ , Sam. That place sells overpriced coffee and tea, and calls it something fancy to justify the price. And they probably serve shitty, gluten-free, vegan-happy pastries that taste like sod, too. We sell doughnuts. That’s all there is to it.”

But that wasn’t all there was to it.

A couple days later, immediately following the breakfast rush, Dean was wiping down the counter when the bell above the door jingled.

He stood up straight and tossed the rag over his shoulder, smiling his patented welcome-to-John’s-sorry-we-only-take-cash smile, and walked over behind the doughnut case. "What can I get you?"

Dean couldn’t get a good read on the guy who walked into his shop. He seemed happy and exhausted all at once, a smile plastered to his features that didn't meet his stark blue eyes. His hair was a wreck, as though he'd rolled out of bed and walked straight into John's, and his attire wasn't much different. He wore a faded t-shirt of some band Dean had never heard of— who the hell were The Avett Brothers?—with a dark red cardigan that had a hole in the shoulder and tattered jeans that hung low on his hips. He pushed up his plastic-rimmed glasses in what seemed to be more of a nervous gesture than actual necessity, shrugged his shoulders up while pulling the sleeves of his cardigan over his hands, and crossed them over his surprisingly broad chest.

He looked away from Dean as he replied, "Um, nothing for me, thank you."

For his stature and his apparent nervousness, his voice was deep and resounding, authoritative in a way that did not beget his appearance _at all._

When the man didn't continue, Dean couldn't figure out how else to reply but, "Okay," with _then why are you here?_ left unspoken.

Words rushed out of the man's mouth while he refused to make eye contact. "I own Seraphim across the street and I'm inviting other business owners over for an after-hours meet-and-greet if you'd like to attend. It's this Friday at seven, BYOB but I think there's going to be a vineyard owner there for a wine tasting and you can bring some of your doughnuts if you want but you don't have to and also a guest is cool too if you have a wife or whatever."

Dean blinked. "What?"

The man sighed, and began again, "I own Seraphim across the street and I'm inviting—"

"Yeah, no, I got that part."

Finally, he met Dean's eyes, the icy blue slicing straight through him in a way that was unnerving, sending a small shiver down his spine— and that was really saying something, because Dean grew up surrounded by men who habitually made it their business to make you scared enough to piss yourself with a single look.

"Then what is it you're failing to understand?" the man asked, shoulders still shrugged up.

Dean's mind came to a complete halt, focused instead on the way the man absently chewed on his lower lip. His every movement screamed _nervous_ , and even though he looked about Dean's age, he was moving around like the teenagers who popped in at four a.m. on Saturday nights, strung out and paranoid that the scowling shop owner and his gigantor moose-like brother would catch on to their druggy hijinks.

If their red-rimmed eyes didn't give them away, the fact that they ordered a dozen doughnuts apiece definitely did, but that was exactly why Dean secretly loved them.

"I, uhh…" Dean began, and now he was actively _staring_ because the dude was looking at him with some extreme doe-eyes, Sam-levels of puppy-dog stare, so Dean swallowed and blinked a couple times and finally replied with an overly casual shake of his head, "No, no wife."

The man smiled and it was like the goddamn sunrise, eyes all crinkled and with too much gum showing above his pearly-white teeth, and Dean completely forgot that they weren't, in fact, part of some socialist commune where it was easy to support places with similar clientele as his own; they were in the post-9/11, recovering-recession Midwestern United States, and small business was no longer booming. 

"So you'll be there?" the man asked, not even trying to hide the hopeful way his eyebrows lifted into his forehead and knit together. The dude was casting some kind of insane spell on Dean, who prided himself on his ease with chatting up anyone and everyone, knowing no strangers, and definitely never letting some random hipster walk into his place of business and set his heart on fire.

But he was still Dean Winchester, so he drew his gaze away and picked at a tiny piece of caked-on glaze from the back of the doughnut case, replying with a shrug, "I mean, yeah, I'll uh... I'll see if Ash can cover my shift."

"Cool," the man replied with a small nod and that same heart-wrenching smile before turning away.

When he opened the door and the bell jingled, Dean said, "Hey, wait. I didn't catch your name."

The man stopped and turned toward Dean, smirking. "Castiel. But most people call me Cas."

Dean smiled back, unable to hide it. "I'm Dean. It was nice meeting you, Cas."

Cas's smirk turned into a full-fledged grin that lifted his glasses off the bridge of his nose slightly, and the tops of his cheeks flushed pink. "You too. I'll see you Friday, Dean."

When Cas left, Dean stared after him, watching him look both ways before crossing the narrow two-way street separating John's from Seraphim.

Sam cleared his throat from the kitchen, leaning against the doorjamb, eyebrows so far up into his forehead that they disappeared behind his shaggy hair. "What the _hell_ was that?"

Dean spun around and tried vainly to think of an excuse for why the tips of his ears burned bright red and he was wearing a dopey grin on his face, but all that he could manage was an open-palmed shrug and the question, "Checking out the competition?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean like _that_."

***

The next couple days came and went, and it took every ounce of willpower Dean had in him to not walk across the street to see Cas again; Castiel, with his juvenile mannerisms and his canvas Toms and his inexplicable capacity to apparently open his own business, which was already wildly successful. While John's still had a line out the door every morning, it was their only peak hour. Seraphim, however, was packed from open till close, the parking lot overflowing with cars, dozens of people hanging out outside during the rapidly cooling days, gazing off into the distance and chatting, rocking back and forth on the vintage rocking chairs while smoking and drinking coffee.

Dean wasn't one to spend time trying to parse out his own emotions, but as he stared at Seraphim— now much more frequently than just as the sun rose— he couldn't figure out how he could _want_ someone so much while also being blindingly envious of them. John's was a staple of the town. It had been open since 1979. It was renowned as having the best doughnuts in the whole damn state.

Dean couldn't figure out how some new, pretentious hipster joint could bring out the business that John's Donuts had been seeking since John died. Surely the people who liked overpriced coffee and shitty pastries would also like cheap coffee and delicious pastries.

The world didn't make sense anymore.

Dean set aside his envy and checked his watch— a cheap, old Citizen his father wore every damn day of his life and which Dean had found on his bedside table after he died— waiting for Ash to come in and take over his shift so that he could go upstairs and get ready for the meet-and-greet.

***

Sam was propped up on the lumpy, threadbare orange-and-yellow couch in their apartment over the donut shop, reading a book on astrophysics by the dim lamplight.

"What the hell does astrophysics have to do with doughnuts?" Dean asked, staring into the dusty mirror in the bathroom, scraping the stubble from his chin with his grandfather's old straight razor.

"Nothing," Sam replied, not taking his eyes away from his book. "It's just nice to know that things exist in the universe outside of doughnuts."

"Not to us they don't."

Sam sighed, and Dean continued, "What time is it?"

He looked at the clock above their warped bookcase, filled so completely that the shelves sagged against the weight of books spanning a vast variety of topics, and replied, "Quarter till. Why? What time is your thing?"

Dean looked down and swished the razor in the sink. "Seven."

"You should hurry up then," Sam said, focusing his attention back on his book.

Dean looked at him and grinned from behind a beard of shaving cream. "No way, man. Haven't you heard of being fashionably late?"

"Since when do you care about being fashionable? I mean, look what you're wearing."

Dean looked down at himself. He was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, because everybody looked good in a black t-shirt and jeans. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

Sam steadied his face in an effort not to smile, and replied, "Just, you know, the way you were looking at that Seraphim guy, I just thought you were out to impress him is all. But if not, you know, then you look fine I guess."

Dean grumbled and slammed the bathroom door shut. When he was done shaving, he went into his bedroom and slammed that door shut too, then came out a few minutes later wearing a nicely pressed pair of grey slacks and a light blue button-up shirt. He stood expectantly in front of Sam, arms stretched out from his sides. "Is this better?"

Sam gave him a crooked grin and replied, "Oh, definitely."

***

Dean wasn't sure what he had been expecting walking into Seraphim, but at exactly seven-twenty p.m., he opened the door and was utterly fucking _floored_ by the sight in front of him.

Tables and chairs— which, he guessed, were usually in the middle of the large room— were organized neatly against the walls. The light was a dim, soft yellow glow emitting from dozens of vintage-looking light bulbs dangling from the high, black ceiling, the wire coils inside the glass glowing orange. The walls were the same brick as the exterior and covered in local art, abstractions of primary colors dotting large canvases. A bar ran across one edge of the big room with the barista station behind it, including a massive espresso machine, neatly lined syrup flavors next to commercial-grade drip coffee makers, and a wall of tea varieties. The floor was a dark hardwood with an array of old rugs scattered about.

Dean could barely recognize Singer's Butchery underneath it all.

Nothing matched, and the place was an explosion of intense color, the polar opposite of the donut shop, which boasted wood paneling on the walls, speckled cream countertops, and a checkered tile floor. The only thing in the whole place that had ever been updated was the vinyl of one barstool, which was a light teal instead of faded orange. The total decor consisted of a big bulletin board covered in Polaroids of patrons who were all celebrating in some capacity— bowled a perfect game, finished chemotherapy, grandkid graduated high school, same grandkid came back from deployment, same grandkid announced their first child, and so on—and there was a pop vending machine in the corner for people who didn't drink coffee, juice, or milk.

Dean stood in awe, staring at the bay window displaying a backwards sign that read _Seraphim_ in a stylish cursive font, watching the couple dozen or so business owners mingle with one another, glasses of wine in hand.

"Dean! You made it!" Dean was pulled away from his slack-jawed gaping when two strong arms wrapped around his neck and pulled him in for a hug. Instinctively, he lifted his hand to return the sentiment, brain slowing to a complete stop as his heart stuttered in his chest.

Cas smelled like nutmeg and wood smoke, the quintessential flavors of fall, and Dean was dizzy with it, the sublime magic of the beautiful atmosphere and the lithe back muscles underneath his hands. For a sweet, brief moment, he completely let go of his anxiety about the donut shop tanking, about the intense fear that he wouldn't be able to support Sammy anymore if he had to close their doors for good, about the dull ache hiding in his heart in knowing the disappointment his father would feel were he still alive.

When Cas pulled away, his hands stayed clutched onto Dean's shoulders. He grinned at him, cheeks flushed in what Dean guessed was an adorable level of wine tipsiness.

Cas looked nothing like the slumped-shoulders nervous wreck who walked into his shop a couple days ago. He ditched the glasses, and his hair was still messy, but in a careful, stylish way. There was no band t-shirt or cardigan. Instead, he wore a white button-up shirt, a navy blue waistcoat with matching slacks, and a loosened red tie around his neck. He looked intentionally disheveled, but in a fashionable way,

When Cas removed his hands from Dean's shoulders, Dean noticed that the guy's sleeves were carefully rolled up to his elbow, his forearms showing vibrant tattoos all the way down to his wrists.

Dean jerked his attention away from them so that he wouldn't be staring, because he was a casual, cool dude, and casual, cool dudes did not gape at pretentious coffeehouses and dumb sleeve tattoos and hipster waistcoats over what was probably a tan, chiseled chest.

Seraphim apparently ran hot, because it was suddenly a billion degrees in the small space.

Dean finally got his wits together enough to smile and say, "Nice seeing you again, Cas."

"You too," Cas replied, bright, shy smile across his face, opposing the five o'clock shadow that seemed to permanently cover his sharp jaw.

They stared at each other smiling stupidly for way too damn long, until Cas finally trailed his eyes down to the bag in Dean's hand. "Did you bring doughnuts?" The excitement in his voice was heart-warming and totally unexpected from someone who had singlehandedly seized the coffee budgets of half the town's citizens.

"No," Dean replied, rubbing the back of his neck and looking at the bag. "It's just some, uhh... other stuff I like to make when we're slow."

Cas took the bag from Dean's hand, brushing lightly against his skin, before opening it and peering inside. “What is it?”

Dean shrugged. "Just weird stuff. Crostatas, crème brulee, tiramasu."

Cas looked up at him from the bag. "Do you sell this at the shop?"

Dean huffed a laugh. "I'm pretty sure big burly war heroes aren't much into things like strawberry savarins. They mostly stick to coffee and glazed twists."

"Well this is great." Cas looked genuinely thrilled, and it made Dean feel guilty that he'd ever felt resentment toward the guy. Whatever fucked-up nonsense that happened in Dean's brain must have been paranoia because there was no way Cas had any ill-intention toward him.

Not with a delighted, goofy smile like the one he was wearing, anyway, which did funny things to Dean's heart.

"Let me introduce you to everyone!" Cas said, taking the bag with one hand and grabbing Dean's hand with his other to guide him through the crowd.

They reached the wine table and Cas pressed a big glass of white wine into Dean's hand, which, hey, Dean never considered himself much of a wine drinker, but free booze was free booze, and he was always up for supporting the local economy.

The next several hours were spent drinking wine and eating food and talking with an array of people with whom Dean actually had a lot in common: there was Bela, the antique store owner; Meg, who owned a nightclub; Missouri, the manager of a Southern-style restaurant; and a woman named Charlie with whom Dean spoke the longest, whose business card had an incredibly long, slightly suspicious list of skills that she did as freelance work.

Dean met a bunch of other people, too, but by the time he was introduced to them, he was a bit too drunk to remember their names. He remembered complaining about the economy and sharing some secret resentments toward the Baby Boomer generation, but he was in a room full of people who felt the same way, who were sharing in the same struggles that Dean was, and it felt pretty nice.

But that also could have been because Cas barely left him alone the entire night, always at his shoulder for long periods of time before going off and fixing something or checking on something or introducing people, only to come back and stand by Dean again, seamlessly reentering into whatever conversation they were having, as though he'd never left.

Dean was in midst of talking to some douchebag named Crowley who owned a law firm and was lecturing Dean on how healthcare should be _more_ privatized, not less— it made Dean's blood boil, because his father would have still been alive if they'd been able to afford the treatments he needed, and what palliative care they _were_ able to provide him in his dying days was still being paid off, years later. He was about to set his wine glass down, roll up his sleeves, and take this dude _out,_ when Cas stepped in with a calming hand on Dean’s arm and said, "I don't think I've given you the grand tour yet, Dean. Would you like to join me?"

Dean wrenched his glare away from Crowley and looked at Cas, who was giving him an overly-intimate telepathic look of _please just walk away, I know he's a jackass but killing him in my coffeehouse is a liability._ It soothed Dean, being looked at in the way Cas looked at him, like they didn't even need more than a handful of small-talk conversations to feel a connection, like Dean didn't need to tell Cas about his history for him to just intuitively _know_ the hot-buttons in his life.

He dropped his anger and set his glass of wine on a table, smiled, and replied, "Yeah, sure," then turned back toward Crowley, trying to hide his sneer when he added, "Nice meeting you, Crowley."

Crowley winked. "You too, Dean-o. I'll be sure to stop in for a doughnut."

Cas grabbed his hand before Dean could reply, _"Don't bother. We give a dozen doughnuts to the Planned Parenthood down the street every day for free. You probably wouldn't want to support that kind of socialist mentality,"_ and swept him away, through the crowd and into a small stairwell. Cas didn't let go while they climbed the rickety stairs, fingers intertwined with Dean’s, and when was hand-holding an okay thing to do with a guy he considered to be a complete stranger all of three hours ago?

Dean's head was spinning, because of both the wine and the feel of Cas's steady hand in his.

The stairs led to a small landing with three doors. Cas let go of Dean's hand to fumble with his keys, and opened the door in front of them.

When they stepped inside, Dean was just as in awe of the upstairs as he was the downstairs. It was an apartment, like Dean and Sam's, but it was less seventies love-in and more modern-day chic. It looked like it came straight out of an IKEA catalog— not that Dean enjoyed flipping through the one that was mailed to them every year or anything— with soft inlay track lighting, a white shag rug over worn hardwood floors, high ceilings, and a recently renovated kitchen in black and steel grey. The living room consisted of two mismatched white and black couches across from each other and adjacent to a fireplace, and the far wall was one big window facing the direction as Dean's apartment. The walls were the same antique, bare brick as the rest of the building, and were covered in enormous bookshelves and large canvases of art. Even though it was modern, which Dean habitually correlated with cold and sterile, Cas’s apartment was cozy and inviting.

How could the guy even _afford_ all this? Dean freaked out about having to buy new boots when the ones he'd been wearing for the better part of five years finally wore out. He went to the mall to pick out a new pair and ended up leaving the store empty-handed because he couldn't justify such a frivolous purchase. Thankfully Sammy went back and bought them on Dean's behalf, and wouldn't let him return them because he'd thrown away the receipt and wore them out of the store.

Before Dean could make a snarky comment about the economy—because he was apparently full of them tonight—Cas had him pinned against the closed door, an arm on either side of his head, and stared at him like he was prey.

Dean swallowed, and tried to cover up the tension by asking, “What happened to the nervous hipster drowning in an oversized cardigan who invited me to this thing?”

From Dean’s peripheral vision, he could see the bright colors of Cas’s tattoos covering his strong forearms, and it made Dean’s dick twitch in his pants.

Cas flicked his eyes down to Dean’s lips and darted his tongue out to lick his own. “He goes away with a couple glasses of wine.” He leaned in closer to Dean, faces mere inches apart, and asked, “You’re gay, right?”

“No,” Dean replied automatically.

Cas’s eyes flew wide open and he took a step back, half _literally pouting_ and half looking like Dean just slapped him.

“Shit! No, no,” Dean quickly corrected. “I’m bi.”

Cas let out a long exhale and put a hand to his chest. “Thank _god_. If the hets got to you, I would have just _died_.”

Dean smiled and took a step forward into Cas’s personal space, putting his hands on either side of Cas’s hips.

Cas trailed his arms up Dean’s shoulders and wrapped them around the back of his neck. He tilted his head and smiled, and they stared at each other, a million words passing between them in silence that didn’t need to be said aloud.

Dean watched as Cas licked his lips again, and he couldn’t stop himself from following Cas’s tongue, closing the gap between them and pressing their lips together. The kiss was tentative at first, soft and slow and sweet, but Dean wrapped his arms around the small of Cas’s back and pulled him in closer, parting Cas’s lips open with his tongue.

Cas nipped at his bottom lip and Dean groaned, trailing his hands over Cas’s ass and squeezing slightly, dragging their hips together. Cas’s hands tangled in Dean’s hair and the kiss heated up tenfold, Cas hitching his hips slightly against Dean, his hardness pressing into him; Dean sucking on Cas’s bottom lip until he gasped; breathy, desperate moans filling up the quiet space.

Dean couldn’t help but wonder how the hell he got here, in this amazing apartment with this amazing man who owned an amazing business, and it was just too damn good to be true, the way Cas tasted like cinnamon and Moscato and smelled like warmth, the way his strong body moved against Dean’s, the way this world could apparently let one good thing exist even when everything else was shit.

Dean was part of that though, the grime of the universe, to be chewed up and spit out for someone else to step in and scrape off on the sidewalk. All Dean had in his life was Sammy, a rapidly failing donut shop, a life whose path he didn’t get to choose, and bills that were covered in red stamps that might as well have said, _“We take thumbs.”_

A disconnect was there: a rift that would always exist between them. It was like they lived in two different centuries, like they existed on two different planes of reality. Being together just wasn’t what was meant to happen in Dean’s catastrophic excuse for a life.

Dean’s heart began pounding in his chest and the floor moved out from under him. He broke the kiss and pulled away from Cas, clutching at his chest and blinking rapidly, trying to get his vision to focus again.

He looked at Cas, who stared back at him with one part confusion and two parts concern, and said, “I’m sorry, Cas. I can’t… I can’t do this,” then opened the door and fled down the stairs, out into the chill autumn night air where he could finally breathe, fogged exhales escaping him like the clouds in his mind.

Everything was blissfully clear again. Cas owned Seraphim, and Seraphim was steadily putting Dean out of business, therefore he had to keep his distance from Cas, no matter how good of a kisser he was or how great it felt to be around him or the way he looked at Dean like he was actually worth a damn.

Like John always said, _“Keep your priorities straight, son. Gotta be able stand on your own two feet before you can start walking.”_

Cas didn’t follow him.

***

Dean didn’t sleep well that night. He tossed and turned and had nightmares of watching his father die, only to come back and die again, over and over. It was an agonizing loop of hope and despair, and Dean woke up at eight the next morning feeling more tired than when he went to bed.

And he had a headache, which only served as an unfriendly reminder of why he didn’t like wine.

He sat up in bed and ran a hand over his face, over the thick layer of stubble, thinking back to the way Cas had kissed him, had smiled at him, and fidgeted around nervously when they first met.

Dean was thankful it wasn’t his week for the baking shift, so he rolled out of bed, fixed himself a bowl of cereal, and read the newspaper while drinking a cup of coffee, pointedly avoiding reminiscing about stormy blue eyes and gentle hands.

After a shower and a shave, Dean ran down to the shop to put together the midmorning deposit and walk down the block to the bank.

Overnight it had turned freezing outside, so Dean tucked the small bag under his arm and shoved his hands in his pockets, whistling “Eye of the Tiger” to keep his head from floating into I-totally-fucked-up-any-chance-with-Cas territory while he climbed the gaudy marble steps to the ancient bank.

For some reason, even though the place only had four employees, the old bank was decadent, with long ionic columns and two revolving doors. Inside was a massive safe deposit vault with a round steel door like in the movies. The carpet was a green floral affair, totally outdated, but it matched the little green lamps that sat atop each teller window.

Dean walked through the useless maze of ropes and stopped at the _please wait for the next available teller_ sign for a moment before Jody ushered him over. “How you doing, Dean?”

“Just living the dream,” he replied, approaching the window and unzipping the bag with their hourly cash drops, considerably more meager than they used to be when Dean made the deposits as a teenager. He slid them over to Jody and asked, “They got you running a window today, huh?”

“Gone are the days where the bosses don’t have to do the dirty work along with the rest of the employees,” Jody said, unclipping the first deposit and straightening the slip to run through the machine.

“Ain’t that the truth.” Dean remained silent while Jody counted the cash. She’d been the branch manager for as long as Dean could remember, but for most of his life, she was always the one in the office, wearing a power suit and swearing too loudly over the phone, her feet propped up and crossed on her desk.

Nowadays, she toned down to business casual, every so often rolling up the sleeves of her increasingly colorful sweaters to display a surprising number of tattoos.

Dean didn’t know what was happening in the world that suddenly everybody and their brother was covered in tattoos, but it was as unsettling as it was intriguing, another notch in Dean’s I-was-born-in-the-wrong-damn-decade belt.

Leaning against the marble slab that functioned as a teller window, Dean spotted a Seraphim cup stamped with the ornate design that served as the logo. He nodded to it and asked, “So what do you think of the new coffee joint?”

Jody shrugged while keying in the cash and putting it away in the drawer. “I’m pretty impressed by it, honestly. That Novak kid’s always been smart. Gonna revive this town singlehandedly unless it kills him first.”

Dean blinked and promptly forgot how to breathe. “Wait. _Novak?_ As in Novak Memorial Hospital?”

“I think so, yeah. Why?”

Dean ran a hand through his hair. “Well that explains a lot.”

Jody stopped the transaction—it wasn’t like anyone was behind him or anything—and gave him her patented don’t-be-a-moron face, which he was sure kept her book of business pretty clean. “Don’t be like that, Dean.”

“Be like what?”

“Just because his family has money doesn’t mean you should be down on him for opening up a thriving business in a damn ghost town.” She picked up the next deposit and began counting it, adding, “From what I hear, he worked his ass off in business school and instead of going to New York or somewhere more profitable, he came back home. There’s a lot to be said for that.”

Dean swallowed and gripped the marble slab. There was no way a nerdy, flippant hipster like Cas really went to _business school_. And came _back_. “Wait. He’s _from_ here?”

Jody raised her eyebrows at him. “You don’t remember him? Town’s not that big, Dean.”

Dean thought back, wracking his brain about how the hell he could have missed those bright blue eyes in this under-saturated wasteland of a town. Absently, he replied, “No. I guess I don’t.”

The receipts printed and Jody tore them off to hand to him. “Anything else I can get for you?”

Dean took the receipts and put them in the bag, forcing himself to replace his astonishment with his usual demeanor. He smiled crookedly and replied, “A million dollars. See you Monday, Jody.”

“I’ll work on that. See ya, Dean.”

***

Dean spent the day stewing in his own resentment while listening to the radio in the kitchen a bit too loud and baking a pie.

It was something he picked up when he was fifteen after his dad had let him start helping out in the kitchen. He’d go to the library, which was next door to the bank, after he made the deposits, so he could look at cookbooks. Doughnuts were great and all, but Dean was fascinated by the magic of baking, the way yeast made dough rise, the way fruits and nuts and chocolate could combine in different ways to make unique flavor combinations, the way other cultures had such different pastries but used virtually the same ingredients that he did.

When he was seventeen, he was sifting through some old stuff in the apartment while he waited for Sammy to get out of school—he’d dropped out months ago, unable to take any interest in his classes and preferring to spend his time helping his dad at the shop—and found his mother’s old recipe book, a beat-up Betty Crocker binder from the seventies. He flipped through it as his heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t remember much about his mother before she died, but he remembered the smell of pies on Sunday afternoons; the way she smiled at Dean when he drew pictures for her. He remembered that she only smoked Virginia Slims, and only on the back patio while drinking her morning coffee, rocking back and forth on their porch swing while she watched the sun rise.

Dean remembered too vividly the way she always looked haunted, even when she was happy. He remembered the sadness behind her eyes that always compelled him to climb onto her lap and hug her, tell her he loved her and that everything would be okay.

She would hug him back with a watery smile and say, “Maybe someday.”

The cookbook was annotated in full in Mary’s messy scrawl, blue ball-point ink tucked between the lines indicating that Dean should use cream cheese in the pumpkin pie recipe to make it richer, that he should put a tablespoon of orange juice in his fondant, that he needed to make sure the brown sugar was packed densely so it would last longer.

There were pages of Mary’s own recipes: her bourbon pecan pie (Dean’s favorite), giant cinnamon rolls, blueberry-lemon tarts; little note cards paper-clipped onto random pages. Dean couldn’t figure out the pattern of his mother’s manic genius with baked goods, but he spent the better part of a decade following the cookbook like it was his bible.

John may have been the king of the doughnut, but Mary was a jack of all trades. Dean liked to daydream  about his parents having flour fights in the big kitchen of their old house.  He liked to imagine them happy and probably a bit high, laughing and destroying the kitchen at two a.m. making waffles topped with cherry preserves and an early version of the glaze that made John’s Donuts famous.

Dean was buried in his reminiscence, rolling out a big circle of dough, heart aching with the dull throb he encountered while thinking about the shattered remnants of his family, when the back door opened and pulled him out of his reverie.

Dean saw the tattoos first, underneath the big, knitted sleeves of an oversized green sweater bunched up at the elbow. “Dean?”

He couldn’t bring himself to smile at Cas, not after the dark mental shit that had been swirling around in his head all day. He couldn’t even manage his fake customer service smile at the moment. “Why did you come in the back?” he asked, confused.

Cas’s face was etched with concern. “Because I came in the front and you must not have heard the bell. I was worried after last night. I thought I’d come check on you.”

Dean pointedly floured the rolling pin and went back to smoothing out the dough. “I don’t need your charity,” he mumbled.

He refused to look up at Cas, but from the silence he received in response, he guessed that Cas was tilting his head. “Excuse me?”

Dean threw down the rolling pin and wiped his hands on his apron before crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the steel prep table. He stared Cas in the eye and said, “Look, it’s really nice that your rich daddy was able to pay for a fancy college education and fund your little coffee project, but around here, I like doing things the old fashioned way, and that means I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this place. I don’t accept pity parties from dudes who were born with a silver spoon shoved down their goddamn throats.”

Blind hurt was etched across Cas’s face for several seconds.

Then it was replaced by a steely resolve and an accurate parody of Dean’s own welcome-to-John’s-sorry-no-free-refills-anymore smile. Cas pulled out his wallet and placed a business card on a clean corner of the prep table. “Be sure to give me a call when you go under. I’ll consider buying your building. You know, maybe bulldoze it and turn it into an extra parking lot for Seraphim.” He winked at Dean before turning on his heel and walking out the door.

Dean stared at the door as it slammed shut behind Cas, gaping and wondering what the _hell_ just happened.

***

Dean ate the entire bourbon pecan pie he made for himself in one sitting, shirtless and wearing sweatpants, cross-legged on his lumpy orange couch.

He stared at the nineteen-inch CRT television Bobby gave him when he moved out of the apartment over his butchery, which had apparently been gutted and turned into some kind of hyper-modern haven. It was hard to imagine that the place had ever held the yellowing box that was presently displaying Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia being slowly crushed by a futuristic trash compactor.

Sam walked into the living room and stretched. Dean didn’t know what time it was, but the two of them plus Ash and sometimes Jo had to get used to adapting their sleep schedule constantly, so they all slept whenever they could manage it. Sam looked from the TV to the rapidly dwindling contents of the pie plate in Dean’s hand. “Mom’s pecan pie and Star Wars. What’s wrong?”

He sat down next to Dean and plucked the fork and plate out of his hand to shovel some pie into his oversized maw. “Hey! I made that!” Dean exclaimed, muffled around a big bite.

“And I’m eating it. It’s for your own good. You’re getting too old to keep up with your entire-pie-for-dinner metabolism.”

“I exercise,” Dean scoffed as he swallowed, reaching forward to pause the VHS.

“Running after the ice cream truck in the summertime doesn’t count as exercise, Dean,” Sam replied.

After a short silence, Dean ran a hand over his face. “I blew it with Cas already.”

“The guy who owns Seraphim? I thought you hated him.”

“I do. I mean, I did. Fuck, I dunno. He’s the nicest guy in the whole damn world, but he’s putting us out of business and it turns out he’s a spoiled rich kid.” Dean sighed, resting his chin in his hands.

“So what happened?”

Dean shrugged. “He was nice to me and I was a dick to him. But then he was mean to me back.”

Sam nodded, setting the pie plate down on the beat up old coffee table in front of them. “So you should apologize.”

“Fuck that,” Dean said as he leaned back on the couch, crossing his arms over his chest.

After a pause, Sam began, tone dropping down to serious-business levels, “Look, Dean, I’ve been asking around about the guy. I know he’s part of the Novak fortune or whatever, but I’ve also heard that he worked his ass off for that place. He bought a lot of the stuff in there from local thrift stores, he only displays local art, and he did a lot of the renovations himself. _And_ he did Bobby a solid by buying the damn place to begin with.”

When Dean didn’t reply, Sam continued, “I know you want to think of us as competitors, but you said yourself, they focus on coffee and we focus on doughnuts. They’re not really taking away our clientele.” Sam paused, as though carefully picking out his words. “It’s possible that we’re just… doing something wrong, and they’re doing it right. So, maybe, instead of fighting them, we should work together. Learn from them. Change things up a bit. Modernize.”

Dean glared at him. “The way we do things is fine.”

“It’s obviously not, Dean. I mean, look at our books. If we don’t do _something_ , we’ll be out of business by next year. We can’t hide from the truth anymore. We gotta find another way to honor Dad besides keeping the shop the exact way he left it. That’s not how time works.”

Dean looked away, toward the window facing Seraphim. It was closed, but the light on the second floor was on. Cas must have been awake, doing whatever it was Cas did in his free time, which Dean imagined to be listening to shitty music while wearing a green visor and counting his mountain of cash.

Sam sighed and stood, toeing on his shoes to relieve Ash of his shift. “Just think about it, okay? I don’t think Dad would be disappointed in us for adapting. I think he would be proud of us for doing what it takes to keep his business afloat.” He opened the front door and looked back at Dean. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

***

It took Dean all of twelve hours to get up the courage and apologize to Cas.

He barely slept that night, thinking through the most effective way of saying, _“I’m sorry I’m a dumbass but I think you’re really amazing and pretty and I like your tattoos, can we go on a date?”_

Because obviously, that wasn’t going to cut it.

What he ended up doing instead was bagging up some doughnuts and walking them across the street at five a.m.

Seraphim was open, but no customers had come in yet, so it was just Cas—wearing a yellow and black flannel shirt, jeans, and oversized plastic-rimmed glasses, hair as askew as always but with stubble thicker than normal—prepping the shop for the morning coffee rush.

Dean walked up to the counter and cleared his throat. When Cas turned around, his blank facial expression didn’t change. He looked more tired than usual with none of the spark that always seemed present behind his eyes.

Dean set the bag of doughnuts on the counter and smiled. When Cas didn’t reply, Dean said, “Good morning.”

Cas looked away for a moment, a sad smile tilting up one corner of his mouth while he huffed a laugh and gave a small shake of his head. Then he looked back up and asked, “What can I get for you?”

“C’mon, Cas, don’t be like this,” Dean pleaded, reaching forward to turn the bag around toward Cas.

Dean had written in his perpetually caps-locked scrawl, _“I’M SORRY I’M A DUMBASS BUT I THINK YOU’RE REALLY AMAZING AND PRETTY AND I LIKE YOUR TATTOOS, CAN WE GO ON A DATE?”_

Cas stared at it for a long moment, face completely blank, and Dean began to speak again, to say sorry with his face instead of with his dumb doughnuts, which took up more of his identity than he ever cared to admit, but three customers walked in together just then, chattering and breaking the tense silence.

Once more, Cas looked up at Dean and asked, “What can I get for you?”

Dean sighed and ran a hand over his face. He was about to turn away to leave, think up a better way of apologizing, but then he remembered he’d never bought a cup of coffee from Seraphim before. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and replied, “A heavenly pumpkin spice latte, please,” a smug, strained smile playing on his lips. While Cas entered the order into his iPad, Dean plucked a buy-nine-get-the-tenth-free card from a holder on the counter and slid it over to Cas, adding, “And I’ll start a card here too.”

Cas rolled his eyes and stamped Dean’s card, took his cash, and made him a pumpkin spice latte. He handed it to Dean unceremoniously before turning his attention to the line of customers that had quickly invaded the small shop.

As Dean walked out the door, he looked down at the side of his cup, which, [in a similar messy cursive to that of the Seraphim logo, read, _“Assbutt.”_](http://castielandrecreation.tumblr.com/post/102340033119/i-was-having-a-crap-day-so-i-read-bettydays-fic)

Dean would have been offended if it hadn’t been so stupid, but instead it made him laugh in a sad way as he jogged across the parking lot to beat the customers about to walk into John’s. Before tossing his jacket on the hook by the door and donning his apron, he took a sip of the latte and—

_Damn._

“Heavenly” was such a fucking understatement that it was bordering on satire. This shit was _delicious._

Dean would just have to get another latte tomorrow.

***

The next day, Dean brought Cas a bag of bear claws. The note on the bag read, _“I can bear-ly stand this. Please forgive me?”_ Cas remained cold to him as he side-eyed the bag and made Dean’s mocha. The name on his cup read, _“Douchenozzle.”_

The day after that, Dean brought Cas one of the pumpkin pies he made from scratch the day before. He wrote a note on top of the plastic lid which read, _“Be my punkin?”_ He swore he saw the corner of Cas’s mouth twitch up, but otherwise he refused to make eye contact, and kept his head down while he made Dean a chai latte. The cup read, _“Jerkwad.”_

The day after that, Dean brought Cas some maple bacon doughnuts with the note, _“Don’t go bacon my heart.”_  Still no progress with Cas, and his cup read, _“Stupidface.”_

After five more days of dessert puns ranging from, _“Do you carrot all? I want to make this better,”_ with a small carrot cake, to the slightly more strained, _“I think we make a great pear,”_ with pear-almond crostatas—and the accompanying coffee cup insults of _“Toolbag”_ and _“Ninnyhammer,”_ respectively—Dean went into Seraphim to get his free, tenth cup of coffee, but he ran out of puns and patience, so he walked in empty-handed.

It was the anniversary of his dad’s would-be sixty-third birthday, so he was a bit out of it, having spent the evening prior drinking himself into a stupor and sifting through John’s old sketchbooks, which were filled with Bob Ross-esque landscapes, charcoal portraits of his mother, and the occasional abstract piece that made Dean stare for hours on end wondering what it all meant.

He arrived at Seraphim after the morning rush instead of before, and the place was surprisingly empty. Cas was cleaning up what looked to be a spill on the floor, and when he spotted Dean, an ounce of relief flickered across his face before steeling himself back into his usual distant stoicism.

Cas met him behind the counter, but before he could ask in his cold, flat tone what Dean wanted, Dean said, “Pumpkin spice latte again,” and handed Cas his filled tenth-free card.

Cas stared at him a long moment before taking it and ringing him up, and Dean added, “Look, Cas, I’m sorry. This is the last time I’ll come in here begging for your forgiveness. I was a dick and it won’t happen again, I promise. That’s all I can give you.”

Instead of responding, Cas turned away to fix Dean’s latte, slid it across the counter without a word, and helped the customer who had just walked in.

Dean sighed and took the coffee, not bothering to look at the day’s insult before walking out of Seraphim for what he had a sinking feeling was the last time.

When he got behind his own counter to help Sam with inventory, he noticed his coffee cup had a sleeve on it, which Cas had never given him automatically before. Dean picked up the cup and slid the sleeve off.

The side of the cup, in Cas’s flourishing script read, _“I like you a latte.”_

Dean grinned and whooped in the air and was all-around beside himself with happiness.

Sam gave him an exasperated arched eyebrow above an amused smile, and said, “Jesus, _finally.”_

***

Later that day, Dean was sitting at the desk in his closet-sized office, pouring over a pile of receipts and invoices and carbon copies of deposit slips, trying to make sense of the month’s numbers in the tattered spiral-bound notebook he used as their sole means of financial recordkeeping. There were doodles drawn into the margins from the every-five-or-so minutes that he spaced out, and the first two pages of the notebook were filled with his pathetic attempt at chemistry note-taking from his junior year of high school.

He doodled an eye and colored the iris in with his blue pen, head resting on his fist. He didn't want to seem too eager to confirm whether or not Cas forgave him, but then he realized that buying coffee and giving him apologetic baked goods with corresponding puns every day was probably well past _too eager_ and bordering on _desperate_.

And he _was_ desperate, because the longer Cas spent mad at him, the more Dean realized that he genuinely liked the way the guy made him feel. It was the same feeling Dean got when he bit into something he baked, not immediately after it was done, but for breakfast the next morning, after a few hours of sleep. That was when it really hit the spot, the acknowledgment that this was a thing he made with his hands from ingredients in their basest form. Right after baking something, there was always the overanalyzing of it, the _is this good?_ and _what could I have done better?_ But the next morning, with a cup of steaming black coffee, home-cooked pastries were love itself.

Dean was mulling it over in his head while adding detail to the eye in the margin of his notebook, the shading pushing against the red line on the left-hand side and covering up a seven and a two from an equation he couldn't remember the purpose of.

He gasped and jumped out of his skin when a loud _thump_ abruptly hit his desk. It was a large stack of papers bound by the biggest binder clip Dean had ever seen.

He looked up to from the dictionary-thick pile of papers to the source of their sudden existence, and a pair of blue eyes similar to the ones he was just drawing stared down at him, stern.

"We need to talk," Cas announced, unsmiling.

Dean's mind drew a complete blank on how he should best react to this situation, so instead, he said, "Why can't you come in the front door like a normal person?"

With the seriousness of an angry nun, Cas replied, "Because I like the innuendo inherent in the opposite."

Before Dean could figure out what that meant, Cas continued, "I came here for two reasons."

"All right," Dean replied, slowly, brow furrowed and mind reeling.

"One, I forgive you."

Dean grinned, and Cas gave him another stern glare.

"Two, I have a proposition."

Dean leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his pen between his fingers, crooked smile firmly in place. "I'm not _that_ desperate for money, Cas, but if you take me out to dinner first, I'll consider it."

Cas rolled his eyes. "Not that kind of proposition, Dean. A business proposition."

Dean sat up straight and said, "Oh," finally glancing down at the stack of papers. The top sheet read, _"Loan Application."_

"What is this?" he asked, fearing that the answer would be so far over his head that he would have to take notes to look up at the library later in private.

"It's an SBA 7(a) commercial loan application." Cas reached into his canvas messenger bag— covered in patches and buttons of modern cultural references Dean didn't understand, though he did see and appreciate an AC/DC logo among them— and pulled out a manila folder to drop down on top of the SBA application.

"And what's this?"

"A commercial real estate loan application from Jody."

Dean blinked, then looked up at Cas. "Sorry, man, I don't get it."

Cas sighed and perched on the edge of Dean's desk, crossing his legs out in front of him. He was wearing a pair of tattered jeans and a black t-shirt with a heather grey scarf wrapped loose around his neck. Dean tried convincing himself that the scarf was the reason he kept letting his eyes trail down to Cas's neck, and not because his collarbones were perfectly accentuated by it.

"The 7(a) application is in case you get declined for the real estate application. I don't think you will, though, because you own the property free and clear according to the Auditor’s website, however, the Small Business Administration is more inclined to take a risk on your business than a national bank."

Dean blinked in rapid succession. "Why do I need a loan?"

"For this." Cas pulled a black three-ring binder out of his bag and put it on top of the tower of papers.

Dean picked it up. The cover had a stylish, modern-looking font which read, _"John's Donuts Renovation Plan (by Charlie Bradbury!)"_ He opened it and flipped through the pages, which were separated by rainbow tabs and included pictures of other donut shops, sample menus, and spreadsheets with labels that said things like _“Projected Balances.”_

After thumbing through it, Dean clenched his jaw and tried to keep himself from snapping at Cas to get out of his goddamn store and not come back. He slammed the binder shut and stared up at him, but before he could speak, Cas said, “Don’t get angry with me. Sam told me what was going on.”

Dean tossed the binder back on his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. He scoffed and said, “That fucking traitor.”

“It wasn’t his fault. He’d been coming to Seraphim to chat up my evening barista, Ruby, but she called off one night so I covered for her. He referred to me as, ‘the guy Dean is pouting about,’ and we had a long talk about the state of your business, so I offered to help. He said that would be great as long as I could convince you of it because, as he put it, I would ‘have better luck building an ice rink in hell.’” Cas used a lot of air quotes when he talked, which Dean would normally find adorable, but at the moment he was too concerned with the fact that his brother conspired with his absurd hipster crush to turn his entire world upside down.

“That fucking coward,” Dean muttered.

“Hear me out, Dean. I’ve liked you for a long time. Since I was ten, as a matter of fact—“

“You _what?”_ Dean interrupted.

Cas tilted his head, “What about that didn’t you understand?”

“Since you were _ten_? But we only met a few weeks ago.”

Cas looked away and ran a hand through his hair, making it messier than it already was, and shrugged. “Formally, yes, but when I was a kid I used to come here a lot after school. You were always, you know, so busy talking to people, girls usually, and helping out your dad behind the counter that I don’t think you noticed the chubby kid with braces spending the afternoon staring at you from behind a mountain of doughnuts in the corner booth.”

Dean’s jaw dropped. He was speechless, vaguely remembering the kid who came in every day after school in a dress shirt too small for him that stretched open between buttons, and who worked on homework until his mom picked him up when it got dark. “That was _you?_ Holy _shit,_ puberty did you a solid.”

Cas still wouldn’t meet Dean’s gaze, but continued anyway, “Yeah, well, the only time we went to school together was for a few months your senior year before you dropped out.”

Dean was still gaping. “So how did you end up…” he gave a vague gesture around the room, “here?”

Cas shrugged and shuffled his feet against the scuffed-up red tile that lined the back-end of the shop. “The second I was able to get the hell out of dodge, I did. I went to business school in Chicago because I was supposed to eventually run a whole network of hospitals or whatever. I finished my undergrad, but I didn’t make it into med school because I failed the MCAT on purpose, so I decided to come back home. When I told my parents I wanted to open a business instead of try for med school again, they gave me some start-up cash as a goodbye gift, which I used to support myself while I found investors for Seraphim.” Cas finally looked into Dean’s eyes. They were filled with depth and compassion and adoration as he concluded, “The reason Seraphim exists is because of your father, because of this place, which was a home to me when I didn’t feel welcome in my own. I know you think Seraphim is a bastardization of everything wrong with the world today, but I promise you that it has the same heart and soul as John’s does, just manifest in a different decade.” He chewed on his lip for a moment before concluding, “I can’t let this place go under. I can’t lose my home, and I can’t let you lose yours.”

Dean’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t control his body as he stood up, placed his hands on either side of Cas’s face, and kissed him with an unparalleled fervor. The room felt like it was spinning around them, and Cas clutched at Dean’s back, pulling him closer. Cas still smelled like nutmeg and he tasted like pumpkin spice. His lips were soft against Dean’s and _god_ , Dean had been so dumb, so blind—the hopeful glances, the shy smiles, the disappointment when Dean had rejected him, which must have been so much more hurtful than Dean could have ever imagined.

Cas broke away and rested his forehead against Dean’s. Their noses touched, and all Dean could see was an ocean of blue staring back at him.

“I haven’t gotten to the best part yet,” Cas said with a sly smile.

“There’s more?”

Cas pulled a stack of papers bound by a small binder clip from what was apparently his messenger bag of holding, and pressed it to Dean’s chest.

Dean turned it around to look at the front, his hand still resting on Cas’s hip.

The top read, _“Winchester-Novak Joint Venture Proposal,”_ followed by legalese that Dean probably couldn’t understand even if he were at the library to look up the words he didn’t know.

“What is it?”

Cas grinned at him. “I had Crowley draft it up. The gist of it is that you sell my coffee at John’s, and I sell your pastries—not doughnuts, but whatever else you feel like making in the morning— at Seraphim. You buy whatever roast I have in stock at wholesale cost plus ten percent markup for me, then sell it at twenty percent markup from that, the price increase of which will make sense after the remodel. You give me the price you want for your pastries and invoice me monthly for them—and you’ll have to implement an accounts receivable system that I think Charlie already drafted for you. I also have a five-year plan to expand to the south side of town if you want to hear—“

Dean cut Cas off by tossing the contract on his desk and pulling him in for another kiss. After a long moment, he pulled away and asked, “Can we discuss this later?”

Cas kissed him again, quick and chaste, and smiled onto Dean’s lips. “Sure. Dinner?”

Dean smiled back, settling himself between Cas’s legs, leaning down to pepper his stubbled jaw with kisses while he replied, “Mexican place on Third Street?”

Cas pushed him away at the chest and glared at him. “Dean Winchester, if you chose Mixteca _just_ so you could say, _‘Let’s taco ‘bout it,’_ I swear on your next batch of maple bacon doughnuts that this deal is _off_.”

Still grinning, Dean leaned in and kissed him again, slow and languid and long enough that he almost forgot the question, then he broke apart, looking deep into Cas’s eyes, and said, “Can you really blame me for resorting to puns at fajita the moment?”

Cas pushed him away, scoffing and straining to avoid the smile threatening to overcome his face, then stood up from the desk to walk out the back door, calling behind him, “That’s it. I’m breaking up with you already. Thanks for the ten minute relationship, but I’m going to go find another hot entrepreneur who _doesn’t use puns to communicate_.”

Dean felt giddy as he pulled off his waist apron, grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the chair, and ran out the door to catch up with Cas, shouting after him, “Doughnut think you can get away with that!”


End file.
